


From Our Ashes

by Severa



Series: Aftermath [2]
Category: Ant-Man (Movies), Doctor Strange (2016), Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Thor (Comics), Thor (Movies)
Genre: AU, Aftermath Series, Angst, Avengers: Infinity War - AU, Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Spoilers, Background Relationships, Dysfunctional Family, Everything is a trash fire, Fallout, Family Dynamics, Gen, Hela-centric, Odin's A+ Parenting, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Slow Burn, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-13
Updated: 2019-01-04
Packaged: 2019-07-11 18:48:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 12,462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15978272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Severa/pseuds/Severa
Summary: Loki learns that the dead never die, and that maybe, just maybe, his big sister isn't the absolute worst. Nebula searches for Gamora while Rocket greives. Ant-Man tries to find his way back home. Four different stories in four different realms, but they've got one thing in common: they're all in way over their heads.





	1. Of Gods and Goddesses

_“There are no men like me.”_

* * *

Thanos’ fist closed around Loki’s throat and _squeezed._

It was a slow, agonizing way to die. Intimate, even, with skin on skin, Thanos’ bare-handed strength wringing him up off the ground. Crushing him in small, uneven measures, fisting around his windpipe until breathing became impossible. Loki’s pulse fluttered in his purple palm, heart straining to circulate. Blood rushed as loudly as the crunch of his own bones grinding, cracking under pressure. Thoughtlessly, helplessly, his feet kicked in a hanged man’s dance. Breath hitching, jaw slackening, the world spun and any desperate thought he had seemed realms away. He would die, but Thor might yet—

_Snap._

Thor’s anguish echoed throughout the _Statesman,_ shaking beams and displacing rubble, but Loki heard none of it. No, the sound was too far away. All sound was too far away, in fact, as if he were falling through the Void again, consumed by its endless darkness. The Bifrost below him, then suddenly above him. The galaxies of time and space stretching him, burning him, floating his corpse in the realm-between-realms.

The pleasant feeling of not-being rolled through his bones long before fear struck. Transfixed by it, nearly drunk on it, Loki considered letting the sensation overwhelm him.

Not-being, however, had never been his destiny.

(What was his destiny?)

 _“You will never be a God_ ,” he remembered. Thor’s lightning flashed in his mind’s eye.

(Not like them. Not like Odin, or Thor, nor Hela herself. Never like him.)

Latching onto that memory, to that spite, Loki remembered himself.

(He was Loki, of Asgard, God of Mischief and the rightful King of Jotunheim, Odin’s son, and he’d solemnly pledged his undying fidelity…)

 _Undying,_ echoed his fate, and the darkness spun away from him.

Floating became falling. Panic crawled through his chest like an unwanted spider, webbing fear through his veins. Falling, _flailing, dying, falling—not again, no,_ **_not again_ ** _—_ Thirty minutes with his heart in his mouth, his stomach turning; a thousand years in panic, swallowed by the Bifrost.

Light exploded in a thousand shards of glass, banishing the darkness with starlight.

This was not a mystical dark. Neither was it the Void’s endlessness, ruled by nothing but space and time. No, it was far more terrifying than that.

Ygdrassil stood above him – around him, below him, existing everywhere at once – while a thousand helpless realms flickered between its gnarled branches. Rot, festering in dark mist, blackened its majesty, threatening creation itself.

_Thanos._

_No,_ Ygdrassil answered, and Loki’s windpipe was crushed all over again, the wind ripped out of his lungs. Six impossible stones glimmered in the stars while the Norns took him in hand, splintering his spine into a million tiny pieces. _The threat is more infinite._

The world tipped backwards. Loki fell headlong into it, burning like a bolt of fire in a meteor shower. Stars and stardust swirled by, biting and snagging; galaxies in colors both imaginable and not tumbled across his vision. Yggdrasil’s roots began to crumble and She, unbound, unraveled in strands of magic, began to die. What was, will, and ever would be teetered on the precipice of existence. All stories threatened to end.

Light culminated in fire. It extinguished everything: sight, sound, and feeling, gone, blazing in its white-hot rage. Seidhr itself withered into nothingness. Loki became nothing, bent like a blade at the forge, red-hot and raw, unable to feel, to know, to _think_ until –

Warmth. _Sunlight._

Valhalla stood before him.

_Oh, no._

Loki stumbled, falling on hands and knees before Asgard’s glory. Valhalla’s gates loomed over him as his fingers scrabbled against stone, plumes of mist underhand. Hitching and heaving, wracked with tremors, his lungs failed him; he still couldn't breathe, couldn't speak, couldn't plead. The dead were deaf to him. No one would come to ferry the fallen Prince of Asgard home.

“Oh. It’s you.”

 _But she might_ , he thought languidly, and swallowed hard.

The world expanded, stretched like stars in the Bifrost. Loki watched, sickened, as Valhalla was torn away from him. Shuddered as familiar magic gripped his heart and pulled back, until the gold-white light was extinguished by grey. The sunlight’s warmth faded. There was nothing but the hand on his back – her nails, digging in, yearning to break skin – and the long shadow of death over him.

Loki trembled as Hela’s breath danced across his cheek.

“Hello, little brother.”

The sharp, distinct smell of burnt meat hit his nose. Her hand fisted in his hair as he choked on his tongue, yanked up to his feet. Whatever sound she wrenched out of him was lost in the mist, mirthless underneath the soft hum of her laughter.

“Look at you. So…” The fingers on his back crawled up, raking over leather until she found his neck. What was left of his adam’s apple bobbed as her nails raked against cold, broken skin, trailing across the cratered handprint that Thanos had left behind. “…crushed.” A wave of nausea surged as her palm lay flat against him. “Oh, darling…”

Hot breath chased away the cold, skating across his ear. She squeezed and his spine snapped taut, uncontrollable fear rushing through him. It cupped his heart, infectious, and disbanded thought; his pulse raced in her hand and he remembered that deafening, numbing _snap,_ the way he’d lost control, his fingers scratching on Thanos’ wrist. Choking, sinking, falling— _I can’t breathe, Thor, I can’t breathe, help me, save—_ falling, flailing, falling— _I did it for you, Father,_ and letting go— _I didn’t do it for him_ , and dying.

“No need to be afraid.”

The sound of his windpipe snapping back properly cracked across his vision as he fell, gasping, onto the stone. Hela let him go. The heels of his palms pressed hard into the ground as he steadied himself, uneasy as the world kept swaying. Dragging ragged, painful breaths into his lungs, he coughed, gingerly holding his throat with one hand.

“You,” his voice was glass against stone, raked over gravel.

“Me.”

Valhalla’s gates stood so far away. He could see them in the distance, still gleaming, where sunlight spilled freely over white mist.

“What—?”

“No.” She snapped her fingers and his mouth flew shut, bound by invisible thread. Loki’s chest heaved, panic barely contained. _Not again,_ came the traumatized thought. He had no power here. This was the realm of the dead – her realm, to which she’d freshly returned.

It occurred to him suddenly that they had died only days apart from one another. The realm Asgard was still smoldering. The people, the new Asgard, did much the same. He sat back on his calves, defeat pitted in his belly. What was done was done. He was here now, and all his tolls had come due in the same day.

“You have a lot of nerve, Odinson,” she began. “The fires haven’t even cooled.”

 _The fires?_ he wanted to say, but thought better of it. Asgard wasn’t so much on fire as it was exploded. All that was left of their home was blood and dust.

Then, with a sickening realization, he knew she didn’t speak of realms.

“A whole realm, _my realm_ , incinerated for nothing, and that’s the least of it.”

For the first time, Loki was faced with the horrors he and Thor had wrought upon their elder sister.

Hela was burning.

Her boots, licked by flame, left orange-white prints smoldering on stone. Pools of smoke trailed off her cape, swirling in the mist. Her clothes, tailored as tightly as they were, had melted into her skin; stretches of green and black fabric threaded across her limbs, fused with bubbled flesh. She stood without her helm, then crouched low, taking his face in her burning palms.

“Tell me, brother…”

Half of her face was gone. Decay cut across its left side in ragged, uneven lines, still smoking, maiming her beauty with a rash of fire that would never stop itching. Her cheek had been burnt through to the teeth; when she smiled, a charred muscle in her jaw slid against bone, blackened at the flame.

“How does it feel to lose everything?”

She smelled like fire, smoke and decay – like Asgard, in its final moments. Horrifyingly, he felt his eyes water. His lips went dry, cracking in the smallest, forced smile when her spell snapped away. He hid his terror behind gallows humor and flattery.

“I still have you, don’t I?”

“Ugh.”

Hela sneered, palming him backwards as she stood away. He fell sideways onto the stone, catching himself on his arm while mist billowed around him. Chuckling didn’t seem to lighten her mood in the slightest.

“Sweet sister,” he managed, pushing down his trembling, forcibly smothering it with the rest of his pain. “Whatever did you expect?”

This mists continued to drift away. Hela turned, ascending stairs that materialized beneath her steps, heels clicking on stone. Loki struggled off the ground as a grey, dreary hall appeared and banished the mists of the In Between.

 _Helheim_ , he knew, dusting himself off when he found his footing. _Wonderful._

His sister lowered herself onto a throne of skulls, folding herself into a dismissive, irreverent pose, one leg bent up on the seat with her elbow pointed into her knee. Relaxing her head against her palm, her expression was drawn with a long, languid sort of boredom. Strange, how quickly her interest waned, he thought. Surely his role in her downfall would warrant more interest. Perhaps he should be grateful it didn’t.

“I expected more,” she answered plainly. “Or maybe less.”

Loki watched her carefully, hiding the trembling of his hands by folding them behind his back. Standing before the throne of the dead – this wasn’t the first time, it wouldn’t be the last – he focused on finding his resolve. It was alarming how difficult it was to formulate any useful sort of thought.

“Well,” he said, awkwardly. Hela glared down at him. “Here we are.”

_Lovely, Loki. A strong start._

When she didn’t honor him with any sort of response, he tried again.

“The last time I was here, I recall you seeming far more invested in my circumstance.”

“The last time you were here,” she repeated idly, studying her nails. “I was alive, and you presented an opportunity. Both of those things are no longer true.”

“I dare to disagree with you, sister.”

“You dare to do nothing.” Her gaze flicked to him, hand falling aside as she glared. “I brought you back from the brink of death once. You indebted yourself to me in return, then deftly avoided me at every turn. In that, you damned yourself to Hel. Except now,” she gestured lazily towards herself, eternally burning. “I’ve no need of a Trickster God.”

“Everyone needs a Trickster God,” he argued, not so humbly. The coldness of this realm swept over him, seeming to settle frost in his bones. “You’re not curious, then? How I died?”

The expression on her face clearly said, no, she wasn’t, but Loki went on anyway. Full of nervous energy he couldn’t dismiss, he began to pace the long, grey hall of Helheim, whose feasting table stood empty and cold. The silver sconces on the columns burned with black flame.

“How half of Asgard flooded Hel’s gates?”

She sighed. “I suppose you’re going to tell me.”

He flashed her a wicked, uneasy smile, turning on heel towards the throne again. Boldly, he leaned against ones of the columns, diagonal to her court. But his lips fell into a flat line when he thought about the past – about Valkyrie, stowing the women and children into escape pods while he and Thor fought desperately with the remaining warriors against the Black Order. The Hulk, smashed.

“Thanos,” he managed, tempering himself. He crossed his arms, hiding the shaking of his hands against his sides.

“Who?”

Panic crept up his throat. Some foolish, hopeful part of him had hoped for Hela to recognize that name. For her to hate him as equally as he did. But how could she, locked away in Odin’s exile? What was the Goddess of Death to the Mad Titan but a figment, a concept that only distantly matched his ideals? Half the universe, dead – that was where their paths crossed, and only there.

“You don’t know?”

“Should I?”

Loki swallowed, then let his head fall back against the stone. His eyes passed over the craftwork carved into the ceiling, mirror images of the murals from Asgard. From home. They were the red ones he’d never seen, but Thor had described them at length.

“No,” he murmured. “But he threatens us all. The dead, the living. You and I.”

“I won’t revive you for the sake of your revenge,” she said, dismissing him outright. “I’ve yet to get my own. And, I assure you, the dead don’t die so easily.”

“It’s not about death,” Loki snapped, leveling his gaze back to the throne. “It’s not about killing. It’s about power. Control. Bringing his ideals of balance to the universe.”

“You fail to tell me why I should care.” She picked flakes of ash out of her hair, flicking them aside.

“You should care because he will not fail.”

“Hm. You sound afraid.”

“Yes. I _am_ afraid,” his admission was slanted, strained. It brought Hela’s attention back up, if only momentarily. “Because where many have failed, he will succeed. He’ll have the stones long before anyone can muster up the might to kill him.”

Her eyes flashed at the mention of the stones, and, for a reason Loki couldn’t quite articulate, relief washed through him. He pushed off the column, gesturing to the vast emptiness around him.

“He won’t kill half the universe. He’ll wipe it out of existence. Make it so they never were.” Absently, Loki touched his neck. “Eitri will’ve made him a gauntlet, by now.” When he’d been plucked from the Void after his fall, Ebony Maw had drawn the name out of him, the legendary tales of Nidvallier’s craftsmanship. “He’ll harness infinity and bend the world to his whim.”

Hela’s response was halted, slow and careful. “If the flame burned me, it will’ve burned the stone in the Vault.”

“No.” he said, biting back shame. “No, it didn’t.”

The black flames shook, casting odd shadows across the walls. Loki refused to look away from Hela as she considered this, his protest explanation enough. Unlike Thor, she didn’t seem to care one way or another that he’d stolen away with a piece of the Vault.

“He killed you, this Thanos,” she started, piecing his story together. “The Aether? Still in Tyr’s holding, I assume?”

Loki didn’t know that name, but resolved that he should after hearing the venom in her voice.

“The Aether was restored to Malekith within the last decade. Only shortly,” he added quickly, when her eyes flashed dangerously. “Just briefly, before Thor took the matter in hand. That was when we met last. After my return…” he shrugged. “We couldn’t return it to the secret place from whence it came, so we were forced to entrust to a Collector. An Elder being. He still holds it, far as I know.”

“You…” She blinked once, then shook her head. “You’re all fools.”

“So I’ve been told.”

Hela rolled her eyes, stood, and descended from her throne. Loki watched as black smoke slithered out from the shadows, ghosting between her steps.

“Let me return to my body, indebted to you still,” he tried, “Let me try to stop him.”

“It’s not that easy.”

“It was before.”

“Before,” Hela said pointedly, drawing closer. “Asgard thrived. I lived.” He didn’t dare let his gaze falter from hers as she stared him down. “Now, Asgard is no more and I’m, well... Dead.”

Brave, bold words came to the forefront of his mind. “ _So you’re cut off from Asgard’s power, as you were before,”_ and “ _I find it curious that death tames the Goddess of Death”_ played across his tongue. Yet he said none of it, cautioning himself. Bravery and stupidity too often went hand-in-hand. She continued on through his silence.

“Were it Asgard alone, perhaps it might be different. But alas, our dear brother summoned Surtur, that big, fire-brained oaf,” disgust curled her features, as if the prophecy were her greatest peeve. Loki pursed his lips and admitted to nothing. “He begun Ragnarok.”

Dismissively, she passed him by, going to the head of the great feasting table in the hall. The shadows that dogged her footsteps coiled up around her calves, licking like flames on a log.

“What of it?” Loki ventured, turning to watch her back.

“What _do_ you know?” Hela asked sharply, looking over her shoulder. “Did Father teach you nothing?”

He shrugged. “Odin hoarded prophecies the same as secrets, it seems.”

Her brows furrowed in pointed disbelief. The shadows swirled away from her, pooling at her feet. Whatever thoughts she had on the topic were discarded when magic began to hum through the stone floor, rattling up Loki like a snake up a tree.

“Come,” she gestured, and he obeyed. “The prophecy is a cycle. In the interim between end and beginning, there are no resurrections.”

The shadows at their feet shook themselves to life, curving through the air without distinguishable shape. In time, under her guiding hand, the darkness wove itself into shape: a fire, swaying in green and black flames, casting a chill from its core instead of warmth.

“If no resurrections, then what?”

“Oh, princling…” Her smile crawled under his skin, but he refused to tense under her scrutiny. The way he jolted couldn’t be helped when she gripped his shoulder, nails clawing into leather. “Is that skepticism I hear?”

There was a crack like lightning across his vision, her nails digging deep as pain spiderwebbed across his skin, every one of his bones snapping in the stress, and then—

_“Don’t need to—what the fuck?” Tony Stark’s voice buzzed in his brain like insects burrowed in his ear. Everything felt wrong: his limbs, somehow numb and agonizing at the same time; his eyes, frozen open; his breath, nonexistent; his neck, snapped. A corpse above him, below him, beside him. A child’s dead-eyed stare drilling into his. Heimdall’s corpse lying cold on the ground too far away from him. Panic bubbled up in his chest – he couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t even struggle to breathe. Already the darkness was closing back in, the long fall impending. A few seconds later – if felt like years, like centuries, enveloped in a million years of agony – Tony Stark stared at something like the world was ending all over again. Loki burned._

Magic whip-cracked across his vision. Breath ripped through his chest and he heard Hela laughing before he felt ice prick his knees, before he realized he’d fallen into the fire that burned with cold instead of heat.

“Don’t worry, love.” When he tried to lurch away from the flames, from the cold that burned his skin blue, she pressed her heel into his back. He choked on the smoke of his own body burning, agony igniting a panic he hadn’t felt in years. “We’ll find a way to make you right.”


	2. It was the Only Way (Trust Me)

_“You will always be my sister.”_

* * *

Vormir didn’t bother pretending that it was a difficult place to find. It seemed like once Nebula set her sights on it, it appeared – like magic, maybe, or fate, but she didn’t believe in those things. There Vormir was, so there she went.

Once she landed, a wraith with red skin and cheekbones that could kill met her. It called itself the Stonekeeper. Nebula didn’t care.

It tried to tell her that the stone was gone; that her quest was for naught and that she should leave, grateful for the fact that she still lived. She assured it that if it didn’t tell her where her sister was, she’d stop at no lengths to make him say – and those lengths would be far more enjoyable for her than for it. (Torture was torture was torture; a means to an end, a tool, and she knew that because she’d felt it a thousand times under a thousand hands.)

The Stonekeeper was more agreeable after that. It directed her to the largest mountain on this this small, barren planet, telling her that she would find what she sought after a long fall from its peak.

So she climbed its winding, treacherous paths; its steep, impossible hills. At its peak, she found the stone pillars that stretched far above the cloud canopy. She found the footsteps of a Titan in the snow, followed by smaller, softer ones.

“Ah, yes,” The wraith appeared so suddenly that she lunged, sticking her sword through its darkness. The wraith looked down curiously at the blade. “…If you would be so kind, _Frauline_. It does nothing.”

Nebula couldn’t help her growl as she put her blade back at her side.

“Where is my sister?”

“The green one was given to the stone.”

“Her name is Gamora!” Nebula snapped, looming over the wraith. “Where is she?”

“Down there.”

It looked and she followed its purposeful gaze, cautiously making her way to the edge of the cliff.

_Thanos._

May the Eternals curse his name. May the Elders declare his ruin. Nebula sucked in a breath through her teeth, hissing, staring down at a spec of green and purple on white.

_Sister._

“Unreachable, she is. Given in sacrifice, her body shall— _Mine Gott_!”

Nebula didn’t so much as hesitate at the warning. In one, two, three great strides, she launched herself off the edge of the cliff, drawing her blades and spinning in midair to face the cliff. Embedding her sword in the soft rock, she used it to guide her fall all the way down, steeling herself against the thoughts of her sister’s death. How far had Gamora fallen? How hard had Thanos thrown her?

As the ground came up to meet her, Nebula closed her eyes and waited for her feet to hit the ground. She knelt into the shock of it, letting it rattle all the way up to her teeth.

 _Sister,_ she mourned.

Gamora stared at nothing when Nebula opened her eyes.

“Gamora…”

Anger bubbled up. But Thanos was not here to kill, to tear to pieces, and neither were her other siblings. So she decided to be angry with herself instead, unable to quell that awful, heart stopping feeling in her chest that felt suspiciously like sadness. She’d never been allowed to be sad before.

“Sister.”

Mechanical eyes couldn’t cry, but she felt her diaphragm hitch as she knelt at Gamora’s side. Felt her hands shaking. Carefully, she brushed back her hair, examining the place where her skull had cracked open.

“We’ll kill him,” she promised, the whir of her voice brought down low to a whisper. Her face twitched as she slipped her hands under her sister’s body, impossibly gentle. “I promise you. We’ll kill him. Together.”

To most people, the dead were dead. But there was a certain someone on a trash planet a couple systems over her owed her a favor. She was ready to collect.

“Let’s go.”

She crouched low to lift her sister off the ground, but in that instant a pulse of energy burned up her legs; her knees buckled at the same time her core clenched, caught in a spasm that paralyzed her system.

“Nebula.”

Gamora, bleeding at the mouth, said her name.

The world went white.

* * *

Inside a world that wasn’t real - a dream, a vision? - made of light and life-energy, two sisters stood together for the last time.

“How do I fix this?” It was clear she wasn’t supposed to be here. The world seemed to tremble in Nebula’s presence, teetering off balance. Light hummed all around her, buzzing at her fingertips, and nothing she did could make it stop.

A Zehoberei child stared up at her, standing on a plane of mirrored glass under a golden sky and said, “You don’t.”

“Then how do I save you?”

“You can’t. But save them,” said the child, stacking visions on top of visions in Nebula’s eyes. She saw a paradise made for the sacrifices. She saw the Guardians of the Galaxy, short the fox, trying desperately to find a way out. They allied with strangers. “Father made a mistake.”

She blinked away the visions, grinding her teeth. Magic made her uneasy, this place even more so. Neither here, nor there – it reminded her of the Maw, who’d always delighted in experimenting with the unknown. On her.

“Father doesn’t make mistakes.”

“But he did. The cost was too great.”

“He can’t be beat. The stones—”

“The stones aren’t his.” The child balled her tiny fists, shaking her head. Black-and-pink curls bounced around her cheeks. “He doesn’t understand.” Nebula took a breath and the world, still vibrating, seemed to shift. Her breath ghosted in a fog and then Gamora, grown and dirty, still bloody from the fall, appeared in front of her. She would’ve jolted away if she hadn’t taken her metal face in hand. A purple trail of blood matted her hair. “This stone is me. I’m _not_ his. We’re not his.”

“Gamora—”

“He wished half the universe away to balance it, but he didn’t weigh the sides.”

“Sister, stop speaking riddles.” She held her wrists like an anchor, mechanically locking her joints. Maybe if she never let go, Gamora could never go away.

She pursed her lips. Nebula held her tighter.

“What can you not say?”

“Do you remember the boy?” she asked, “The one Thanos tried to make our brother?”

“The failure?”

“Yes.” Gamora agreed, brushing her fingers over the blue scars of Nebula’s modifications. “Find him.”

“Thanos already killed the Asgardian. Maw told me.” _When he tore me apart_ , she didn’t say. Mixing small talk and torture was his favorite past time.

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “He fails at everything but dying.”

“What does that mean?”

“I have to go.”

The world shook. The mirror beneath their feet softened to liquid, sloshing as they hovered inches above it. Gamora looked down, then up; a warm wind brought heavy air, ominous and oppressive.

_Thanos._

Gamora pulled her close, pressing their foreheads together and wrapping her arms around her neck.

“Goodbye, Nebula.”

“No—”

The world flashed in gold light.

* * *

Deeper within the stone, farther away than anyone could hope to reach, Stephen Strange hovered above green grass, legs folded and hands precisely posed from meditation. He took advantage of what precious few moments of privacy he could find.

His mind threaded out towards oblivion – to the edge of infinity, as it were, which felt much like an elastic band. Yet his magic never rebounded; it spread, pooling across the barrier, not so different from oil sliding over water. Not impenetrable, but malleable. A stubbornness that could be coaxed into compliance with the right pressure. And when it was, his magic threaded further out into the unknown, which felt like molten glass and tasted like hot iron and coconuts. The unmistakable smell of burnt ozone came over him and he pressed again, seeding a calling card out into the universe.

In all the fourteen million realities he’d seen, they’d won in one.

Unfortunately, it was hard to hold onto all the little details of one reality among fourteen million.

So Doctor Strange waited as patiently as he could, projecting his magical distress signal into what he hoped was his reality. Tried to find another magical presence reaching out to his own.

All he could do was wait. It was a good thing he’d already spent an eternity dying once, he thought morbidly. Patiently waiting in a psuedo-paradise was better than being Dormammu's punching bag.

Still, it was absurd how much faith he was placing in Tony Stark.

He could only hope Stark had that same faith in him.


	3. Guardian of the Galaxy

_ “Me, personally? I could lose a lot.” _

* * *

Rocket wasn’t entirely sure what the whole deal with Terrans was, or why they liked to worship giant cats, but that seemed like that was just one tiny part of their whole weird existence. Honestly, Terra already had a reputation for being bizarre and outlandish, being one of Asgard's realms, but this was just downright insane. Two dudes here were on some sort psuedo-religious, oddly specific bio-enhancers; one other normal, slightly enhanced guy had the coolest vibranium arm ever. Then there were two scrawny nerds in antique armor, some angry women with tasers, and to top all off, Thor was friends with almost everyone. An Asgardian King, buddy-buddy with a bunch of humie lunatics. And that was without mentioning the old school blasters, spears, and black powder bullets. Everything was retro as hell, but they’d put it to use.

And he wasn’t saying that he liked them or anything, because he didn’t, but — they’d lost a lot too, despite their damn good fight. So there was that. He could respect it. 

Still, Thor was his favorite.

Thor, who’d shown up after the fight with a vine sticking out of a weird, gold-silver vase with glowing purple text, saying he remembered the story of the Dance Battle for the Galaxy. How they’d planet at piece of Groot to make him again. So, of course, he couldn’t in good conscience walk around with a piece of him and do nothing, so he’d stripped a piece of Stormbreaker’s handle and planted it in ‘vibranium rich’ soil.  _Queen Shuri says if it will not take to this, then it shall take to nothing,_  Thor told him. _It grows mystical herbs for them, so why not for Tree?_

Stormbreaker’s handle was a bit weaker for it, but Rocket? He was a little less broken.

It still wasn’t fair, though. That was the easiest way to say it. None of this was fair, and he was going to fucking strangle Thanos with his bare claws if he had the chance. Scratch his face off. Blow him to little bits and pieces, put those pieces in a blender, and throw the blender into the nearest supernova – after taking the Moon Destroyer and blowing his big dumb head to smithereens.

Thanos, by proxy of Ronan, was the reason they’d lost Groot the first time. He was never supposed to lose him again.

Was this how Drax felt  _ all the time _ ?

So when the  _ Bataran  _ came flyin’ in through the blue sky, he’d caught a ride on Thor’s shoulder and been the first one there to see it land. ‘Cause at the end of the day, his family wasn’t just Groot. It was all the biggest morons in the galaxy, and he could see Quill sitting in the cockpit as the ship touched down. 

How was he going to tell them that Groot was gone?

But.  _ But.  _ When the ramp came down, Quill wasn’t there — it was just one Terran, stumbling out with a bunch of blankets around his shoulders, looking a like a homeless Xandarian.

“Quill?”

The Terran went to Thor and Rocket scampered passed them, up the ramp and into the ship. Or, almost into the ship — he stopped dead in the airlock, bristling with the cold and the sight.

“Holy crap.”

Dead bodies, everywhere. On the floor and tables, stacked on top of each other like playing cards. Rocket made a face, pulling his whiskers back considerably. They  _ smelled. _

“Yeah, hopefully they don’t thaw out any time soon.” His head snapped up to Quill, who leaned back against the dividing wall into the cockpit, obscuring the display projected there. “’Sup, Rocket?”

The wave of relief that flooded through him was something to be ashamed of, twitching around his whiskers. He was alive. There were here, they were okay, and everything would be okay...

“You son of a bitch,” Careful not to sound too desperate, he stepped over a massive, dark-skinned dude at the entryway to get closer, folding his arms over his chest. His fur puffed up against the cold. “What… Where is everyone? Why’s my ship a morgue?”

“We ran into ‘em on the way back, Stark wanted to pick ‘em up. Wouldn’t take no for an answer.”

Stepping around a woman’s head with a very intricate set of knots and braids, Rocket shuddered, holding his nose. He kept looking all around, trying to find the other idiots who should be on board.

“Quill, where are they?” When there was no immediate answer, Rocket looked back at his friend, and, horrifyingly, watched him flicker. “…Quill?”

The hologram of Star-Lord made it look like he was sighing, shrugging widely.

“Wish I could tell ya, man.” The screen behind him changed as he stepped away, ticking by with everyone’s tracker information. “Made ya look, though, didn’t I?”

The world slowed down considerably. With it, the text filtering across screen slowed, showing each piece of information with grueling clarity.

_ Star-Lord, Peter Quill: TRACKER OFFLINE _

_ Drax the Destroyer: TRACKER OFFLINE _

_ Groot: TRACKER OFFLINE _

_ Mantis: TRACKER OFFLINE _

Sickeningly, one row of information flashed red, indicating the worst.

_ Gamora: LOCATION – VORMIR, HELGENTAR SYSTEM; NO VITALS DETECTED _

His friends, dusted.

His friends, dead. 

His friends, murdered.

“Gotcha…” He barely heard Holo-Quill speak. Barely felt the cold metal on his knees as he hit the ground, barely realized he was sobbing into his own hands. Something awful and heavy grabbed his heart and ripped it out. Rocket grieved like no one had ever grieved before. “Sorry. It was Babysitter protocol, man. Nebula turned it on.” He wished Nebula being alive made him feel better, but it just made him feel worse. If one of those sisters was gonna die, it wasn’t supposed to be Gamora. The hologram flickered in front of him and he sniffled, wiping his wet nose on the back of his hand.

“N-no, no—”

Then he was looking at her. Gamora.

“They disappeared,” she said, her hand outstretched like she wanted to touch his cheek. Stupidly, he tried to lean into it. “Mantis. Drax. Quill. Groot. Me— Gamora— I, I—” He didn’t even realize he was holding his breath until she knocked it right out of him. “…I’m dead. Gamora is dead. That’s the only thing I can confirm.”

In the same way that Xandar and Ego and every stupid Sovereign ship had blown to pieces, Rocket did the same; his chest crumbled, his mind cracked, and every little feeling he’d ever dared to have came out in sobs that wrenched his tiny heart too far out of place.

He was the last Guardian of the Galaxy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short flashback to when Rocket found out the news.


	4. Tardigrades and Tic-Tacs

_“I think our first move should be calling the Avengers.”_

* * *

Abandoned in the crazy non-space that was the quantum realm – all bright lights and abstract structures, an unholy child of Dadaism, LSD, and Ecstasy – Scott realized that Hope _might’ve_ had a point. He should’ve paid more attention to all their science-y, quantum-y crap instead of playing _Asteroid Destroyer_.

 _Too late for that,_ he thought bitterly, _Now you’re running scared from Water Bears._

He jumped over a branch of whats-it-called, clutching Ghost’s collection unit to his chest as he ducked down and pressed hard into the slimy, Barney-purple structure, folding himself into a corner as tardigrades floated overhead.

“Murder-hungry bastards,” he muttered to himself, tucking his chin into his chest. Cassie would probably love the damn things.

It was impossible to know how long he’d been here. Mrs. van Dyne wasn’t the biggest fan of reliving the last thirty-some-odd years of her life, but she’d warned him at length what not to do during their little collection missions.

One: don’t get eaten by a tardigrade. _Check._

Two: don’t get sucked into a time vortex. _Check._

Three: don’t do anything stupid. _Check?_

Okay, maybe he was having a hard time with number three.

He scooted deeper into the corner, underneath the branch of quantum-stuff and further into the safety of the shadows. He was distinctly aware of how his shoulders didn’t have to hunch quite as dramatically as they had a moment ago; either the structure was breathing, or he was shrinking. Either option wasn't great.

“Hope?” He clicked the button on his wrist, whispering in his helmet. “Hope? Hope, come in. Please.”

Just like always, static was his only response.

Time cycled on.

* * *

There was no night in the Quantum Realm. There was only light. Streams of magenta, blue, and yellow burning above and around him; sharp wavelengths of green, purple, and white spiking under his feet in random orders, sometimes jostling him out of step.

Scott stumbled, but never fell. Scott kept thinking. Scott kept remembering things, stupid things, just to make sure he never forgot them.

_“All right, all right.” Luis took a deep breath. “So I’m at this art museum with my cousin in Nassau, right? And there was like this abstract expressionism exhibit. You know me, I’m more like a Neo-Cubist guy…”_

Scott remembered his friends. Scott remembered his daughter Cassie.

_“You can do it. You can do anything. You're the world's greatest grandma.”_

Scott kept walking.

* * *

The Quantum Realm was almost silent. He could hear himself breathing over what little noise existed here, but sometimes, when everything felt overwhelming, when his heart beat louder than his lungs, he sat down and just _listened._

The air felt like water, which moved in waves of energy, making his fingers tingle underneath his gloves. Tardigrades moaned like whales; creatures that he didn’t recognize oozed across the energy-ground, sometimes leaving trails of light in their wake. Everything trembled and shifted in phase, buzzing like static electricity.

_I won’t go Quantum-crazy, I won’t go Quantum-crazy. They’ll find me, I won’t go Quantum-crazy._

But when he did – and he did, often, trapped in a dream of the Raft, locked up tight with a bunch of other people he wished hadn’t dragged him into this – he had enough sense to leech off the healing energy trapped in Mrs. van Dyne’s container, hoping Ghost wouldn’t hate him too much. It gave him a little more time of clarity. A few fleeting moments to walk a little bit farther into the dark, desperately searching for a way out.

It didn’t really matter what Ghost thought, he realized. She might be more ghost and less human by this point.

* * *

The suit malfunctioned often. Hank had promised he’d worked out the bugs before he went in, but that was like Tony Stark promising he wouldn’t make weapons anymore. Technically true, but with lots and lots of loopholes that made it easy for things to go wrong.

The regulator was broken. Again. It made his size fluctuate uncontrollably, sometimes making him a little bit bigger, a little bit stronger. But never big enough, of course, and for every size-up, there were twelve size-downs. Either way didn’t make him any less hungry, either.

There was no coming back from this. There was only going smaller. It was a fear that nagged the back of his brain with every step, every breath, every crazy and not-crazy thought.

What was smaller than this? What happened if he shrunk, _really_ shrunk, again?

Scott didn’t want to find out.

(He did anyway.)

* * *

When it happened, it happened fast: the suit trembled, Scott stumbled, and all the light in the Quantum Realm blinked out of existence. He didn’t even have time to scream.

It might’ve been days or years since he’d first went in. He didn’t know. Not that it mattered. Because he saw himself in the dark, a thousand times over; eighteen million Ant-Mans staring back at him, fractured like broken glass in a mirror, shattered with light that buzzed like an electric toothbrush against his tongue. They all floated in the dark, framed by strands of rainbow-light, and the silence weighed down like the grave.

He reached out and they reached back.

_Holy shit._

Which one was he, he wondered, and then suddenly none of them were the same. The trance broke and each Ant-Man moved, sucked into their own world; they acted out a million different scenes, lived a million different lives, and fought eighteen million different fights.

Time ceased to be as he tried to make sense of it. It felt like a hundred years, or maybe ten seconds past. It was impossible to tell. But once he did, it felt like something was pulling him in - like a piece of dust up a vacuum, or one of Cassie’s toys flushed down the toilet. The fun house mirrors hooked him and dragged him in _hard._ There was no escaping it. No forgetting it.

These weren’t reflections of himself. These were pieces of his life. Slices of time. Just there, three million fractures to the left, he saw Cassie being born; one hundred up, he met Luis for the first time; twelve down, he kissed Hope. All his memories were playing out on film, shards of his life threaded through the darkness. Time swirling around him in a vortex.

_Oh no._

* * *

Somewhere in between realms and dimensions, a tiny little man avoided dying at the hands of a Titan.

Somewhere on the border of sanity and thought, a time vortex swallowed the key to everything and spun him around like sugar in a cotton candy machine, turning a perfectly good man into something so unstable that he became more figment than reality. And right before it would've split him apart and made him into nothing, he thought to open Ghost's containment chamber. 

Thank God for the unpredictability of Pym Tech.

That was how somewhere at the end of the world, a man managed to bottle time itself and landed in a place between places - a place that Should Never Be. A place of his creation and not, where nothing but him existed. A pocket dimension where sense died and, eventually, a thread of magic was cast into it, thrown out like a fisherman's line in the ocean. Having been alone with Nothing for so long, Scott knew there was only Nothing to lose - he grabbed onto it, hooked himself on the line, hoping for Hope and wishing she’d take him home.

Doctor Strange felt the tug and pulled.

There was nothing again, then white, then orange, then gold and-

Scott stumbled into infinity and immediately fell on his face, tripping over his own ankles. His helmet bounced twice against the soft ground.

“Hey!”

Scott groaned as his head spiraled, knowing if he had anything left in his stomach he’d barf it all out right now. Somehow, he managed to wrestle his helmet off and tear off his regulator, throwing it away as a pair of boots came rushing up beside him.

“Goddamn. Tic-Tac?!”

He made the mistake of looking up. The sky was gold, the grass was green, and there was a streak of red fabric hovering over the Falcon’s shoulder that seemed to be _looking_ at him. The air tasted like oranges, but everything was already going fuzzy. Nothing made sense. Someone who looked a lot like Jesus Christ in combat boots came up on his other side, which would've scared him out of his mind if he'd had one left. 

_Oh God._

A couple feet in front of him, some dude wearing a lot of layers stood up from hovering four feet off the ground, muttering something before he started yelling.

It had finally happened. He'd gone Quantum-crazy.

_Crap._

Arms trembling, he didn't even try and save himself when his hands slid out from underneath him. The ground came up to meet him, but the impact never came; Scott passed out mid-fall, leaving his welcome party to watch him drool into the dirt. 


	5. The Makings of Gods

_“What were you the God of, again?”_

* * *

When the fire cooled, Hela took the thing that had been Loki from its embers.

It was but a meager flame, flickering white and pale gold around the edges, begetting heat for a chill that stung her burning palm. It was the essence of him - every memory, every word, every little spell, now stripped of the artifice of life. He’d become something she could dissect and piece apart, mold and make new again.

And so she would. _But first,_ she decided, _let’s see what you were._

Sitting on her throne of skulls and bone, one leg folded over the other as she held the flame of her little brother before her, she willed it to show her its existence. To unravel itself, with all its magic and lies, into something sensible. Her irises bled gold as Loki’s seidhr itched up her arm, seeping into her veins as she wondered, almost idly, how thoroughly her Father had ruined his last child.

It turned out that he’d ruined this one the worst.

Firstly, the second son of Odin was a terrible bore - compared to her, at least. Where Loki might’ve inspired fear, she’d wrought terror, and his pettiness marred whatever potential he’d had. His life, with all its lies and pain, hadn’t amounted to anything. All of his obtuse finery meant even less. The bulk of his princehood was this: he’d been spoiled, arrogant, and narcissistic, having very little worth outside of his wit. Perhaps they might’ve gotten on, had she been present. She certainly wouldn’t have let her Father ruin him so badly.

Then again, she thought, had she been present, perhaps he might’ve never been.

But what came next - the before and after of princehood, of Asgard and ambition - was far more interesting than his upbringing.

She stood in his cloudy, murky memories and watched her breath fog the frigid air. Snowflakes caught in her hair - a side effect of being in a sorcerer’s memory, she supposed, where reality held very little power - and she stared up and behind her at the looming columns of a Jotun palace. This place she remembered with no fondness, but on a cold rock in the gardens before her, a golden King stared down on a baby. A tiny, disgusting, blue little thing, who screamed against the frost forming on his fists. _Loki_ , it was called.

Odin’s face before her was bloodied and blurred by his infantile memory. But it didn’t linger long -- the memory pulled away until it became so thin that he was falling through it, and falling fast; plummeting into the darkness with the Bifrost above him, the seeds of madness planted in his mind. A place darker than oblivion followed that, stuttered memories of agony cast across a span of years. Beings of various intent molded him into something deadly, keeping him strung out on his own suffering - his own pathetic, self-begotten tragedies. The looming threat of death followed in his shadow, cast by a purple figure she couldn’t name.

 _Thanos,_ said his memories. Hela felt his fear and shoved it down, back into the flame, but felt herself drawn in by it. Wanting for more.

And _oh,_ was there more.

Madness. Agony. An inferno of pain, stoked in torture and loathing. Games played with mad men, risks taken against foes. A failed conquering of something that was already his: Midgard, rising to the challenge. A cell in Asgard’s dungeons gifted to him by Odin. Malekith and the Aether returned, brewing a longing in Loki for the weapon, if only to protect the people he despised from the people he feared. A glimpse of her own unburnt, forsaken face when he lingered in death on Svartalfheim. And then, when his madness calmed, soothed by the balm of returning home, he took the pieces of his own unmakings and tried to put them to use - trying to calculate the odds and risks of the inevitable path to the end. He’d meant to steal away the stones from the madman who’d use them to tear apart the universe.

But more important than all of that, than his plots and failed schemes, was him. His origin. An abandoned child of Laufey, taken in by her Father on the eve of battle, while the armies of Asgard waded knee-deep in Frost Giant blood.

Fifteen hundred years hadn’t made Odin a stranger to her. He should’ve killed him, not taken him in. She dared not to wonder why.

Pulling herself out of his memories, Hela turned the flame that had been Loki in her hands, watching it dance. Had it not been for the Valkyior keeping her in exile, maybe she’d have killed him herself long ago. He’d certainly had a hand in making sure Sutur had killed her.

Not that it mattered now. Standing from her throne, she descended the steps, banishing the past and focusing on the matter at hand. The opportunity would arise for her to find whatever revenge she desired in due time.

 _Well, princling._ The cold flames she’d burned him in extinguished themselves as she walked through them. The magic bled out her eyes as he illuminated her path down her hall, flickering dimly. _You may not be as worthless as I thought._

Loki’s murder at Thanos’ hands was of little interest to her. Yet Thanos himself… She considered him only a moment longer than she considered her brother. But in the end he was just another mortal playing at Godhood. A psychopath ruining the fun for everyone else. His little children, cavorting about like they were worthy of war, were even less impressive. Fitting that Loki had almost been one of them.

It would’ve been one thing if Thanos had meant to _kill_ half of all living things. To flood the worlds with death, to take her brothers by their skinny, annoying necks and wring the life out of them. That she could respect. Ambition. War. Death. Order and rule.

But _no_. He’d simply wiped half of everything out of existence. Conquered nothing in the process and halted the natural way of things, hoarding away souls instead of giving them any glory in death. If he wished for Godhood, as Loki seemed certain he did, he was doing a terrible job of it. He had the ability to do everything and all things, and instead settled for collecting souls as trophies.

It seemed he was in desperate need of enlightenment.

Hela knew the power of Infinity Stones. She’d seen one taken and shaped into a weapon that could devour realms. The Aether. If not for her, Malekith would’ve succeeded; if not for her, the key for the making of the Bifrost would’ve never been found. The Tesseract. Their one way to control the realms, to secure their rule and cull the Dark Elves. After all, even just one stone could wipe out half of the universe when used correctly, but that over-sized, lavender Mangog couldn’t see past his ambition and—

(Hela let those thoughts die there, reminded uncomfortably of her Father’s scorn.)

If only things had gone differently, she thought. If only she’d conquered the realms and collected all the stones herself. Asgard’s glory would’ve been mightier than eternity, and she, at its helm, would’ve ruled the cosmos.

But now she was left to fix the universe’s wrongs from beyond her grave, ruling over the dead and setting to resurrect those that shouldn’t be. Perhaps there was something worthwhile in all this mess, she thought. Thanos had torn natural order to shreds. She could do as she pleased, whenever she pleased.

The walls between worlds seemed thinner, now. More pliable. Less eternal.

Loki’s soul-flame glimmered up the stairwells of her empty, hollow palace, doors scraping stone against stone as they opened themselves for her. No one stood in her path. Hel’s sort of dead didn’t have cause for celebration, having missed their opportunity for eternal glory, so the corridors remained empty. The souls kept to themselves, wandering down green-flame streets outside the palace proper, in the shantytown of the dead.

However, Hela rarely turned away company when it called, having seen enough solitude in her exile. So when one lumbering, raging soul had come pounding on her doors just a few months prior, demanding many things he’d no right to, she’d given it freely. Hel’s forge for his awful company.

The-thing-that-had-been-Loki trembled when the armory doors opened, screeching as she made her entrance. Standing at a massive, molten-green forge, a dwarf glared down at her, brimming with the rage and sorrow of someone scorned.

“Brokk,” she said, smiling. His frown only deepened. “I’ve a project for you.”

* * *

Brokk was no less talented for having lost his brother. He was one half of a legendary set of twins, the other being Eitri, the last crafter of Nidavellir, now King by default. Together, they’d forged Mjolnir and many-less-important-things, being famously inseparable in life, distinguishable only by their scars. Eitri’s ran short and scattered across his face, earned in war, while Brokk’s ran long, a lengthy gash cut from brow to jaw, bridged across his round nose, earned in a sword fight against Heimdall.

Once upon a time, their forges had brought about the peaceful surrender of Nidvallier to Asgard after a short-lived rebellion. Their gold that had made her glorious palace. That had done nothing to relieve the tension between their peoples, of course, and neither time nor death had changed that. Brokk spewed curses on her name and her family even as he worked under her charge.  

Hela didn’t care. She put her baby brother’s soul to a dead sconce while Brokk worked, where he could flicker about and idly exist. They had work to do.

At the forge they put many things of a forbidden nature into the pot: black water of Svartalfheim, bottled in ancient times; eternal flame of Muspelheim, peeled off her own arm; stolen sap from Ygdrassil and a web-string of magic from its seidhr-spiders; a single drop of Alfheim’s light, bled from elven tears; and a drop of blood mead, looted from Asgard eons ago. All of this on top of ingots of black uru, the very same that made Hela’s weapons, enchanted to become one and a part of her in her youth. Once thoroughly smelted, she could mold it to her desire.

Loki would have a body. She would make it herself. But there was another hurdle yet.

Once Brokk grunted that she’d spent enough magic for the task, muttering curses all the while, she took to a table, picking through a tattered spellbook. The pages turned of their own accord, as she was careful not to burn anything with her flame-touched hands.

Aye, she could forge a new body for Loki. It would take bloody, black magic and a favor she was loathe to ask, but it could be done. Brokk could smelt ore and she could mold it, breathe new life into it, and imbue his soul in its heart. Uru would take kindly to it. But she couldn’t make _him_ — Loki of the past was as good as gone inside a new body, wiped clean of his madness and burdens. His mind could not exist as it had before.

(Because Thor, moron that he was, had already burned him. Time moved so swiftly outside Helheim that she’d barely noticed it pass her by, and when she’d thought to try and mend the body, to rebuild his neck and all his broken parts, she saw it in ashes at her blood brother’s feet.)

So what was this plan without all the silly little secrets of Odin’s second son? What was the advantage of bringing him back without all the things he knew? Perhaps she’d forge this body stronger than the last, less susceptible to strangulation death, but it would be as if she’d thrown a newborn babe into the ocean and told it to swim. Useless. It needed to remember, but yet it could not. It needed to exist outside of itself and within all at once.

_Ah._

How fortunate, then, that she had him in a perfectly dissectable form.

As she approached the sconce she’d set the soul-flame to burn on, she considered the action she was about to take. There were other avenues she could pursue. Memories could be taken from the soul and stored elsewhere - in a dagger, perhaps, or any item of magical make. Recorded in a book with magical ink. Imbued in blood or mead meant to drink. Hela didn’t _have_ to tear Loki’s soul to pieces to preserve his memory, but she would. Because she could. Because this little ingrate had taken Sutur’s skull and put it to the flame, cursing her to burn for eternity.

So he would burn the same. In agony. Torn in half, never whole, taunted by the knowledge that if he were to make himself complete again, he would lose himself entirely to the new Loki. The stronger Loki. The _better_ Loki. It would be a permanent, irreversible death. Immune to his wit and wiles. She could take the smallest scrap of him and will it back into form; curse it with a tether to the new body, where it could only squawk about the past and never truly live again. All the while making good on the promise that she would remake him. That he could his revenge on Thanos.

Except it wouldn’t really his revenge, would it? The God of Mischief was dead. The God of Whatever was his successor, his almost-reincarnate, and he’d be forced to watch it have all the little moments he so desperately longed for: victory, retribution, redemption. _Thor._

 _Aye,_ Hela decided, palming Loki’s soul off the sconce and taking a single lick of the flame between her skeletal fingers, pulling it at it like a frayed hem. “I do hope this was worth it, little brother.”

Her smile glinted green in the forge-light as she destroyed him, picking at the fragile threads of his soul.

Loki barely felt it happen.

* * *

All that was left was the body.

But first, there were her questions. This Thanos. The Infinity Stones and the gauntlet Eitri had built to the doom of his brethren.

“It’s all fucked,” Brokk declared, stoking the fires as their concoction melted in a large furnace, not so different from a cauldron, hanging by massive chains from the ceiling. Were this merely weapon making, it would’ve been poured from here into a mold; instead, they had it hung low enough to monitor, for Hela would have to sculpt molten metal with her own hands once it was ready. “This is all fucked.”

For now the Goddess of Death leaned against a worktable, a thread of soul hanging heavy around her wrist like a bracelet. The rest of Loki was already set to smelt, his soul-flame flickering inches above the melting surface. When those flames burned hot enough below, so would he, until he became one with his makings.

“It seems we agree on something, then.” She tapped her fingernail against her arm, poking through holes in her flesh without a second thought. “What did the dwarves know about the stones, Brokk?”

“Only not to throw your lot in with ‘em,” he grunted, wiping his mouth with one massive hand. “Temperamental pieces of shit, they were. Not worth the trouble.”

“But they were useful,” she murmured, nail scratching idly against bone. She hardly felt it through the burn of her flesh.

The Bifrost had been built with the power of the Space Stone - the Tesseract, Heimdall had called it, and so it had been known ever since. Malekith had used the Reality Stone to create his Aether. She’d seen their power. Felt it. Been blessed to witness their might. And when Odin had realized her ambitions for them, he’d locked all of them away across the realms.

Not that she really cared for such thoughts, anymore.

As Brokk’s face fell in a thunderous frown, Hela pushed away from the table, idly pacing towards the racks of tools. She brushed one hand over the metal hammers and tongs, considering them.

“This Thanos has no respect,” she mused, feeling that thread of Loki’s soul tremble against her wrist. “For their power. For the natural order they were meant to keep.”

 _Or for death,_ she meant to say, _For me,_ but instead kept those thoughts to herself. Brokk was largely ignoring her anyway, shoving wood into the massive hearth beneath the melt.

“He’s a genocidal maniac,” he grumbled, coughing into his fist. “Can’t you appreciate that?”

“There was nothing genocidal about Asgard’s conquests. You were left standing, weren’t you?” She smiled wryly, not expecting him to appreciate her point. “No point in ruling over nothing, after all.”

“Says you.”

She shrugged, thin lips pulling into a thin line. “Aye, says me.” She turned on her heel, staring at him from across the room. “This Thanos has trampled across the universe and stolen souls that are rightly mine. Killed those that were rightly mine to kill. Would you let that stand, Brokk, if you had a choice?”

He paused in his work only for a moment, then shook his massive head.

“Why d’ya think I’m here bustin’ my arse for you? For that scrawny little shit? No.” He bellowed more air into the hearth, invigorating the green flames within. “If I could strangle the big bastard myself, I would, believe you me. But I can’t. So,” he shrugged, “Let’s hope the little shit can do it for the both of us.”

* * *

But Hela wasn’t the sort to leave matters in the hands of others.

She wasn’t the sort to let things be, to _roll with it,_ as others might say, nor was she patient. No, she'd had enough of patience in her exile. Enough waiting and wanting. There was something immensly gratifying about taking action on a whim - be it in battle or in action, the slit throat of a soldier gushing down her blade or a wicked word sharpened on her tongue - and dying had made her no less reckless. She was freed from the idle worries of life and, while it might be wise to simply wait, to watch uru boil molten until it devoured her brother's broken soul, she decided that she could not. That there was time yet before he would be ready to mold. That there were temptations to indulge in. So. With many questions still unanswered, with so many impossibilities made possible in this new, broken universe, it seemed there was only one recourse. One path to follow.

Hela wanted to meet Thanos for herself.

And so she would.


	6. Hope

_"At the root of existence mind and matter meet. Thoughts shape reality. This universe is only one of an infinite number. Worlds without end. Some benevolent and life giving. Others filled with malice and hunger. Dark places where powers older than time lie ravenous and waiting. Who are you in this vast Multiverse, Mr. Strange?"_

* * *

The first time Doctor Strange sat down in mid-air to meditate, to test the boundaries of infinity and learn where the lines in the sand were drawn, his arrogance got the best of him. Why he’d thought he was powerful enough to understand it, he didn’t know, but infinity quickly reminded him of his place, just the same as Kamar-Taj had done. Meditating, reaching out into the unknown, he extended his shaking hand out to the sky and dared to touch it.

The world went black, gold and red in an instant. He ceased to exist until a spry little spider boy slapped him across the face and shook him out of his stupor, worry in his eyes as the Sorcerer Supreme vomited blood.

* * *

The eighteenth time he tested infinity, Stephen woke from his astral expedition in a cold sweat, shrouded by his cloak, not so unlike a doctor hovering over its patient. With colors swimming in his vision, flickers of the past in his mind’s eye, he licked the blood from his corners from his mouth and grimaced.

It still hurt, but this time there was more than just the pain.

“Doc?” The cloak shifted aside for Peter as he hurried to his side. “Man…” With a grunt, he hauled him up off the ground, doing his very best not to look judgmental. It wasn’t convincing. “...you can’t keep doing this.”

 _I will,_ the rational part of him wanted to agree, but he bit his tongue. Where there had only been pain and color before, now there were visions - brief glimmers of the past in his mind’s eye, scorched across the sky that kept burning him alive. A red-skull wraith speaking to Thanos. A pair of colorful sisters battling in an otherworldly desert. Thor, God of Thunder, caught in the inferno of a dying star. His brother-not-brother, younger and madder, falling headlong into a void. Tony Stark, floating alone in the dark… A woman falling faster than them both, deeper and longer, as a hundred more women in the same uniform died above her. The corpses of winged horses littered the rocks. A woman wearing a crown of thorns laughed as she was swallowed by the dark.

“I know. I know.”

Yes, he knew. But when had that ever stopped him?

* * *

He was seeing time in a way he never had. Glimpsing reality beyond these walls; seeing all the befores, nows, or afters that made it. Space kept swallowing him whole in a blue flame, crackling around his soul like it wanted to devour him. Every time he reached out and touched the golden barrier that kept them trapped inside, it showed him something else as it tried to unravel him, picking at the frayed hope of the Sorcerer Supreme.

The three hundredth time Stephen let infinity swallow him whole, he finally had an epiphany.

Epiphany, it turned out, had green skin and a sharp sword.

* * *

_Of course._

Everything seemed a little bit brighter, a little bit sharper around the edges, like the air in Kamar-Taj after the first snowfall of winter. It was clarity. The first deep breath after meditation. A realization found in the last page of a book. It was an epiphany during the apocalypse.

Epiphany, calling herself Gamora, said this:

“Some stones demand a sacrifice. Some don’t. Figure it out.”

In the golden realm of what had to be the Soul Stone’s heart, this woman leaned against a column of air and crossed her arms, offering him nothing more than a few words in lieu of explanation.

“I can only tell you what I want,” she said.

And there it was.

What _I_ want.

The stones were more than they appeared. More than just tools or pretty gems on a gauntlet. They were living, breathing, breath-taking fragments of reality; they were more than just _things,_ because how could something inanimate create all that ever was? It couldn’t. _It just couldn’t._

“Bingo,” she’d said, prying through his thoughts.

He blinked and she was sitting, still leaning against the column of air, tossing a double-blade dagger in a steady rhythm. It spun above her, glinting in the unnatural light. By the time she caught it in its descent he noticed the blood smeared across her face; the crack in her skull, framing a flattened crown and occipital bone, making a flat mess of her matted hair.

“...You’re the stone.”

“I guess.”

Up went the dagger and down again. She let her head tilt back, dripping congealed blood down her neck.

 _We’re not all the same._ She said without speaking, clawing at the edges of his sanity. _I’m not the same._

One part Gamora, the sacrifice. One part stone, a living cornerstone of creation. Together they appeared in this space as one, playing games with a blade, watching it go up and down again into their hand.

“I see,” he said cautiously, not daring to move closer.

“But I’m still me,” she murmured.

In his visions, the red-skulled wraith had said the stone demanded a sacrifice. The thing that meant most to Thanos in the world, the only thing he’d loved. So he’d tossed Gamora over the edge and claimed his prize.

The stone read his thoughts and corrected him, catching her blade and holding it still in their hand.

_No. We don’t demand what you love._

“Then what?”

She scoffed, shaking her head. Up went her blade again, and down, and up. _You know the answer,_ said her silence. _What did you sacrifice?_

It wasn’t an easy answer to give. All that Stephen had ever given he’d given to Kamar Taj - to the Ancient One, to Wong and the Mystic Arts. He’d given up his friends and family in the name of protecting the world. Once, he’d given his eternity to Dormammu, trapping himself, a stone, and the Devourer of Worlds in a never-ending loop. (Perhaps a piece of him was still there, dead and dying, over and over and over…)

Was that the answer to her riddle?

“Myself.”

Down came the blade, hilt landing squarely in her palm.

“Terran. Asgardian. Xandarian. Kree.” Gamora said softly, leaning back against the empty air. She pressed her thumb into a large gem of her weapon and the blades retracted with a _click_ , managing to echo off of nothing. “We’re all the same. We all care about the same thing.”

 _Yourselves,_ said the stone.

“But Thanos still has it. He used it,” Stephen pointed out, carefully as he could. He folded his legs in midair, placing his hands on his knees as he thought. “And you’re…”

She shook her head, expression arching in annoyance.

 _He holds the power…_ acknowledged the stone.

“...but that doesn’t mean I have to listen to him.”

And that was it. There was nothing else the stone would say about it, nor would Gamora - perhaps they couldn’t - but their existence was proof enough that the stones had yet to yield.

It wasn’t Thanos’ prerogative to hoard souls. He’d meant to destroy them all, to unmake them in a single snap. Their souls, gone; their time, stolen; their power and energy, his; their reality, their physical body, undone. Yet they remained. Body and soul - cloaks, armor, spider senses and more - sequestered away in a realm of gold.

Because that was what the Soul Stone wished. How Gamora had circumvented her Father.

Thanos hadn’t sacrificed what he cared for most to the soul stone. He’d sacrificed something he considered important to him, sure, but that wasn’t it. If he’d sacrificed everything to gain the stone, half of existence would’ve continued to be.

But his daughter, who’d he’d thrown down on the bloody alter?

She _had_ given everything. Herself, her life, her blood. And she’d give everything she had left to make it right again.

* * *

The next time Stephen sat down in mid-air to test the limits of infinity, having found a way to seed his magic beyond its barrier, through the veil and into the void between dimensions, the Stone was silent. His cloak was limp across his shoulders, the grass four feet beneath him still. Down at the base of the hill, the statistically unfortunate Avengers sat together; Spider-Man lay out on his back, staring at the sky and playing with a hologram. Groot was spread out next to him, adding the occasional, seemingly helpful _“I am Groot.”_ to his work. The van Dyne women were a little further down, not so close to them, sparring while Hank Pym tirelessly tinkered with his daughter’s suit, using tools procured from his own jacket and various gambling games with a nearby Asgardian camp.

Others were nowhere to be found, out exploring their new existence - or trying to spite it - and the paradise of the Soul Stone was peaceful. For the moment.

Of course, peace never lasted long.

His inner silence was abruptly jostled by a sharp blip of something caught in his magical net, cast out at the edges of infinity. It was a spec of something in the nothing, barely there, stuttering like the sharp, blinding skip of his heartbeat. Where he’d meant to find a message from Wong or a wandering consciousness from the living world, he’d instead caught something entirely different.

There it was: his one in fourteen million chance, stuck in the dark like a fly in a trap.

Stephen nearly passed out himself trying to rip the thing out of the void. First it tried to pull him out with it, but the stone sharply protested, tendrils snaring his soul and yanking backwards and down, anchoring him in its reality. Everything was blurry and unclear in that moment, two mystical forces in dispute until something snapped; a crack of orange light, sparking with embers around the edge, shot like a lightning bolt in the night.

Rough, familiar hands found his arm and he realized, quite suddenly, that the only thing keeping him upright was his Cloak, its hem hooked underneath his arm. He must’ve lost consciousness, the darkness rushing back up to meet him like a tide. The edges of his vision went gold, sparking white with pain as the stone said _let go of him, he can’t be here, he’ll know._

A wave of energy passed into his arm like a morphine drip. Warm and numbing, intoxicating and grounding - a type of magic from the very fabric of reality.

He found his feet.

 _Damn,_ was his first thought, before he managed to cough out, “Ms. van Dyne…”

She held him tight, keeping him steady

“Janet, please,” she said softly, holding him steady as everything slowly stopped buzzing. He could see Wilson and Barnes bent over the flickering thing he’d just tried ripped through dimensions, but it was fast becoming futile; its existence was about as reliable as his hands were for neurosurgery. “Easy, Doctor.”

“What did I do?”

“You found Scott.”

 _Scott,_ he thought, and sluggishly realized, _Scott Lang._

The stone pressed harder and Janet pressed back, feeding him quantum energy, keeping him conscious enough that Scott didn’t get flung back into the empty space where he’d been. Orange mantras encircled his wrists, his hands trembling harder than usual.

“The regulator’s busted. Again. We don’t have time- _Hope,_ ” Pym had appeared, kneeling beside Scott. Wilson was kneeling, having dragged him into his lap as he tried to smack the consciousness back into him. “Hope, your suit.”

“C’mon, Tic-Tac, rise and shine.”

“I got it.” Barnes tried, reaching into his pocket.

“How about no? I don’t know what creepy assassin shit you’ve got in there-”

“Move over, buddy.”

Halfway over to the group of superheroes fussing over the strangest superhero of them all, Strange felt a body slip underneath his arm. A mess of brown hair appeared in his peripherals.

“Gonna be all right, Doc’?”

“I’m fine, Parker.”

“Sure. Sure. Dead, stuck in a stone, but we’re fine, we’re fine.”

“Take me over to him. Quickly.”

Back on Titan, when he’d sat down and meditated for fourteen million timelines, Strange had seen the possibilities of what could be. Of how they could win. It had been a rough outline at best, not so different from a poorly planned story, but in that needle-in-a-haystack timeline, he remembered seeing this.

“C’mon, Pete,” Doctor Strange muttered, “Time to get a message to Stark.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And there goes the end of part two!
> 
> Part three has turned into a little bit of a mess for me, as it's the part of the story I'd rather jump over so I can skip to the meat of it (a.k.a. Loki), so please be patient with me. It's something of a New Year's resolution for me to write more and judge myself less, so if you see me posting other stories or one-offs, know I haven't forgotten about his.
> 
> Please let me know what you think so far. I'm caught in a space where I'm stuck trying to make sure all these different branches eventually meet up, and, y'know, writing the end of the actual story. Hopefully before _Endgame_ releases.
> 
> Thank you!


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